The suicide of Ajax

Anguished face turned up to the skies, the man seems to run toward the dagger he is about to plunge into his heart. Balanced on his left leg, the instrument of death aimed at the middle of his chest, our heavily bearded hero wears an extravagantly plumed helmet, a cuirass, leggings, elaborate sandals, and a theatrically billowing cloak. The subject is Ajax committing suicide. Despite the elegant accoutrements, the focus of the composition is his pained expression, clearly inspired by the agonized grimace of Laocoön, protagonist of the most famous ancient marble group. Larger than a typical bronzetto, the beautifully cast figure should be considered a small statue, exquisitely chased and meant to be observed from different angles in spite of the privileged frontal view. The translucent warm brown patina, typically Florentine, is worn at highpoints and obscured by later opaque coatings in the shadowed areas.

The Ajax was unpublished until 1985, when it was recognized as an original bronze by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini.[1] The precedent had been set by another example of the composition, auctioned in 1970 as a Suicide of Cato possibly by Pierre Le Pautre, and now in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.[2] Andrew Ciechanowiecki attributed the Toronto version to Foggini, and it was published as such by Charles Avery in 1975.[3] Its subject was revised at the same time thanks to the enterprising research of Jennifer Montagu,[4] who discovered a “compelling graphic source” for the bronze: Antonio Tempesta’s etching of the death of Ajax based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and published in Antwerp in 1606 with the inscription: “Aiax mortem sibi consciscens, in florem abit.”[5] In Ovid’s account (XIII:382–98), the Greek hero Ajax, having lost to Ulysses in a verbal contest over who should receive the divine armor of the dead Achilles, stabs himself. Montagu also located a closely related wax model, formerly in the Museo Ginori di Doccia, Sesto Fiorentino, that was among the pieces purchased from Foggini’s heirs by the Ginori family to make figurines in porcelain (fig. 144a).[6] The inventory of the Doccia piece-molds lists “a statue representing Cato committing suicide, of wax, by Giovan Battista Foggini, with its mold.”[7] The payment to Vincenzo Foggini, dated April 28, 1750, however, records the subject as “Ajax killing himself.”[8] It is well to remember in this context that the Roman senator Marcus Cato the Younger is usually represented committing suicide in bed.[9]

The Doccia inventory confirms the attribution to Foggini intuited by experts based on style and quality of execution. A drawing of a bearded man with a helmet in Foggini’s recently rediscovered sketchbook along with another sheet of helmet designs kept in The Met might have been preliminary studies for the Ajax.[10] The Doccia wax model differs in the right hand, but this was probably a later addition. In the bronze, the right arm guiding the sword to the chest is to be considered Foggini’s original conception.

The work likely dates to his most productive period as a bronze founder, between 1687, after his appointment as court sculptor, and 1694, when he became court architect and was kept busy with larger projects. The Ajax is stylistically consonant with Foggini’s groups Hippomenes and Atalanta (fig. 144b), Pluto and Proserpina, and Boreas and Orithyia (the latter two in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome). All three works date to the early 1690s.[11] Richard Stone’s technical analysis of our Ajax supports the chronology.[12] Around 1689, Foggini completed The Miraculous Appearance of Saint Andrew Corsini during the Battle of Anghiari, a marble relief for the Corsini chapel in the Florentine church of Santa Maria del Carmine, which features a running male figure very similar to the Ajax (fig. 144c).[13]

With regard to the history of our bronze, it is important to note that, years later, the sculptor Massimiliano Soldani Benzi proposed to make an Ajax for Henry Grey, first duke of Kent, as indicated in a letter dated July 31, 1716, from Mr. J. Gerrard to the duke: “I send your Grace his [Soldani’s] account of [a clay model of the Judgment of Paris] and of another subject, which of several others he proposed, seemed to Mr. Harrold the best, Ajax’s killing himself upon the decision of his dispute with Ulisses. The model is about 18 inches, but I shall take the just measures before we go from here which I believe will be on Tuesday next.”[14] Gerrard tutored the duke’s son Anthony, earl of Harold, while on the Grand Tour.[15] Grey declined Soldani’s offer, but one wonders whether the model that he was prepared to cast was related to our Ajax, as the dimensions and subject perfectly coincide.
-FL

Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.)


1. Christie’s, London, December 13, 1985, lot 158.
2. ROM, 989.28.14. Christie, Manson & Woods, London, May 12, 1970, lot 132.
3. C. Avery and Keeble 1975, p. 26.
4. See ibid., where Avery credits Montagu; see also Keeble 1982, pp. 144–45, no. 66.
5. MMA, 51.501.3970; Bartsch 1983, p. 69.
6. See also González-Palacios 2017.
7. Lankheit 1982, p. 128, no. 27: “Una statua rappresentante Catone in atto di ammazzarsi, di cera, di Giovan Battista Foggini, con forma.”
8. Ibid.: “Aiace che si ammazza.”
9. See also Moog-Grünewald 2008, p. 36.
10. See d’Alburquerque 2016, p. 38; MMA, 52.570.226.
11. Lankheit 1962, pp. 48, 82; Montagu in Detroit 1974, p. 62, cats. 25, 26, which confirms Lankheit’s dating by providing a terminus ante of 1702 for the Rome groups.
12. According to R. Stone/TR, April 6, 2011, it is clearly “a late example of the Florentine grand tradition.”
13. On the marble relief and the documents related to it, see Monaci Moran 1990, pp. 157–58; Fabbri 1992, p. 310.
14. The passage is transcribed here for the first time. The letter (from the Lucas family papers, Bedfordshire Archives & Records Service, Bedford) is discussed in Friedman 1988, p. 844, with a mention of the “Ajax killing himself,” but none to our bronze.
15. See also C. Avery 2005, in which, however, the Ajax is not mentioned.